Film Festivals and Anthropology

This collection explores the intersections between anthropology and film festival studies. Film and anthropology scholars map ethnographic film festivals and ethnographic approaches to festivals worldwide. The book provides a historical reconstruction of most of the main festivals exhibiting ethnographic film, considering the parallel evolution of programming and organisational practices across the globe. It also addresses the great value and challenges of ethnographic research tools for studying the wide-ranging field of film festivals.

This volume is the first to collect long-term experiences of curating and exhibiting ethnographic film, as well as new approaches to the understanding of film festival practices. Its contributions reflect on curatorial practices within visual anthropology and their implications for ethnographic filmmaking, and they shed light on problems of cultural translation, funding, festival audiences and the institutionalisation of ethnographic cinema.

The book offers a novel perspective on film festivals as showcases for cinema, socio-cultural hubs and distribution nodes. Aimed at anthropologists, media scholars, festival organisers and documentary film professionals, it offers a starting point for the study of ethnographic film exhibition within its cultural and social contexts.

Transnational Connections. Film Festivals and Documentary in Latin America and Spain [paper]

NECS conference 2016. The University of Potsdam, Campus Griebnitzsee, in Potsdam (Germany).
Panel A 12: Film Festivals in Latin America and Spain, Sponsored by Film Festival Research Workgroup. Thursday, 28.7.2016, 11:00-13:00 (27-30.July.2016)

Panel organized in collaboration with the research project ‘The transnational relations in Spanish-American digital cinema: the cases of Spain, Mexico and Argentina’ (CSO2014-52750-P), supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.